[ExI] What's Wrong With Academic Futurists?

[Keith Henson]

On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 1:59 PM,  Robin D Hanson <rhanson at gmu.edu> wrote:

> On Jan 25, 2014, at 11:28 PM, Keith Henson wrote:

snip

>> If you have not read it, I suggest "The Black Swan."  ...
>> 1  The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and
>> rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in
>> history, science, finance, and technology
>
> The fact that some things are hard to foresee doesn't tell us who does
> better at foreseeing them.

On theoretical grounds I claim there are no such people.

That not to say that you could not find them in the data, just as you
can find a string of heads in a long series of coin flips.

The guy who wrote The Black Swan made note of the people who made
money as infallible stock pickers were just lucky, not systematically
prescient. His experimental data is that the ones with a long track
record do no better than new ones in the next year.

>> So I take Eric Drexler seriously on his projections of radical
>> abundance.  I take Ralph Merkle seriously on such topics. ...
>
>> I work on power satellites, particularly the aspect of how to
>> construct them at a cost where they make economic sense.  I cannot
>> predict that they will happen.  ...
>> I have thought about the future for a long time and have no confidence
>> in people's ability to predict it.  Best they can do is project the
>> consequences of certain things, but even there . . . .
>
> If you have no confidence in "people's" ability to predict, I don't see how
> that can be the basis for preferring some people's ability over others.

I think I said I took them seriously, over people who have not done
any work.  Their predictions tend to be plausible, not accurate.

> From: "spike" <spike66 at att.net>

snip
>
> The military has detailed plans (that actually work) going out 25 years.
> They also peer down the road a century, but that one is anyone's guess.
> They talk about AI, singularity, all the stuff we discuss here.  I wouldn't
> be surprised a bit if some of the graduates of the Singularity University
> end up working for DARPA.

Maybe. I have been less than impressed by some of the SU grads. It's
not like a couple of months turns you into a god.

> From: BillK <pharos at gmail.com>

> One big advantage the military has (or must have) is the ability to
> stop innovations that conflict with their objectives (as specified by
> corporate and political leaders).
>
> The difficulty that futurists have is trying to detect which branches
> of the future spreading tree of possibilities will flourish and which
> will stop.
>
> Being able to prune disliked branches makes your own future plans more
> predictable.

Sorry, I can't buy this.

Keith